Urbanism News
Saturday, December 22, 2007
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Back on January 3rd Season's Greetings and Happy Holidays from urbanism.org. We are taking a break from the web and will be back on January 3rd. |
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Bdonline's alternative architecture awards for 2007 Who has won the God complex award, the blatant greenwash award and the better late than never award? Zoë Blackler pays tribute to this year's high achievers. |
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ar awards for emerging architecture 2007 The AR Awards for Emerging Architecture is the biggest and best award for young architects in the world and gives £15 000 in prize money. Inaugurated in 1999, it is sponsored by Buro Happold and InterfaceFLOR. Intended to bring wider international recognition to a talented new generation of architects and designers, the Awards have attracted entries from more than 80 countries, representing every inhabited continent. |
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The Architecture Top Ten Actually it's just five — and one of them is a sculpture park — plus five hopefuls for next year. Why only five? Even though Steven Holl's Bloch Building at the Nelson-Atkins Museum may be the best new American building I've seen since Frank Gehry's Disney Concert Hall, I can't honestly say I saw nine other new buildings this year that rose to the bar. (There are American projects only on this list by the way. For some reason even Time's travel budget doesn't allow me to circle the globe at will.) |
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Commuters helping commuters Riders on the delay-plagued Commuter Rail system can now help each other beat the morning rush. New York resident Joshua Crandall recently launched a Boston beta version of "Clever Commute," a commuter information-sharing service he started as a frustrated rider on New Jersey Transit. "Commuting is a game, and the way you win this game is with information," Crandall said, paraphrasing a Clever Commute subscriber. |
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Imagining Super Taxis of the Future A hypercharged MetroCard that could be used on both taxis and subways? Taxi fares subsidized by advertising? G.P.S.-mapping of empty taxis available for download? Group cab rides from Shea Stadium? Late-night buses replaced by taxis? A one-passenger cab? |
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A Food Bill for America’s Cities With many legislative hiccups along the way, Congress is rapidly deciding the fate of America’s food supply: what’s grown, how it’s produced and by whom, and how that food will affect our health and the planet. |
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Mo' monkeys, mo' problems Marauding monkeys are becoming a problem in Delhi as a result of the loss of their natural habitat. Delhi, with a population of about 16 million, is increasing in size by 500,000 people a year. Parkland and forest areas that once provided homes and food for the monkeys have been destroyed to provide housing for Delhi's booming population. |
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Listen closely: Our roads are getting quieter Highway 520's sweet spot — a sliver of freeway near the eastern end of the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge — is so smooth and quiet even an ancient Geo Metro feels like a first-class cabin. This is a test. This is only a test. |
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A first: Condos outselling houses A single-family detached house has long been the ideal dream for Canadian homebuyers. But, in case you couldn't already tell by all the construction cranes dotting Toronto's ever more crowded skyline, 2007 has become the year of the condo. |
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Show challenges bias against ornamentation Fifty years ago, at the high-water mark of steel and glass modernism, those adjectives described architectural no-no's. You didn't decorate a building. You stripped it of ornament (or at least you made it look that way). You didn't speak of beauty, which sounded old-fashioned and subjective. You spoke of objective truth and of an architecture that would be the inevitable byproduct of its industrialized epoch. |
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On the Bus With Banham A tour of unseen LA—in the spirit of Reyner Banham—rambles through the city. |
Thursday, December 20, 2007
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'Eco-city' in China gives off aroma of green — money The world's first major eco-city designed from the ground up to minimize environmental impact may soon take shape on this island near Shanghai. That is, if developers don't hijack the plan. As word spreads of the Dongtan Eco-City and its whisper-quiet streets and canals, where battery-powered buses will transport residents, the whiff of money is in the air, and developers already talk of building a Disney theme park to raise property values. |
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New Orleans Waterfront Plan Takes Shape A team of architects led by Chan Krieger Sieniewicz, Hargreaves Associates, TEN Arquitectos, and Eskew+Dumez+Ripple, will unveil the final design in February for revitalizing a stretch of the Mississippi River in New Orleans. The broad goal of the redesign is to reduce barriers that discourage people from enjoying the river and replace decaying sections with parks and public venues that will trigger private investment. |
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Public Spaces + Public Life At the beginning of the month, Danish architect and "urban quality consultant" Jan Gehl produced the results of his nine-month study of central Sydney, Australia. The city of Sydney had hired him to produce a body of recommendations in order to improve the city's core, both functionally and experientially. |
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Nation’s ‘First Suburb’ Aims to Be Most ‘Green’ “If we can make Levittown an example of easy environmentalism and show homeowners how they can make changes to save money and improve the environment,” he said, “we can do an extreme makeover of an entire community that can become a model for the rest of the country.” |
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Meet the moofers: the office is so last century Welcome to the brave new world of the moofer – or mobile out-of-office worker. Look around: you’ll see them conducting deals, holding meetings or finding inspiration at a coffee shop, hotel lobby, airport lounge or park bench near you. This new generation of young, tech-savvy workers live their business lives in nomadic fashion, wherever they can find a wi-fi connection – and they don’t believe in the traditional nine to five. |
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The Unintended Consequences of Building Green W ith all the hype surrounding sustainable building techniques, the decision to go green seems like a no-brainer. But the decision is more complicated than most realize. Each new green element, from daylight maximization to passive cooling, can affect other systems, often forcing changes that were never anticipated. As more green elements are added, more time and money must be spent on making adjustments, and more potential conflicts can arise. Light baffles and vents can cause headaches for acousticians; operable windows can cause headaches for fire experts, and so on. |
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School believes you can't be too safe The building, designed to house and secure more than 600 people, has 23 security cameras inside and out that record 24 hours a day. The windows do not open, in part so no one can sneak in, and they're larger than usual so the school grounds can be monitored. During business hours, all but one of the facility's doors are locked, forcing every visitor to enter through the office. Welcome to Watertown-Mayer Elementary School, one of the newest -- and most unusual -- schools in Minnesota. |
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High Noon in New Orleans: The Bulldozers Are Ready Ever since it took over the public housing projects of New Orleans more than a decade ago, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has been itching to tear them down. Now, after years of lawsuits and delays, it looks as if the agency will finally get its Christmas wish. The New Orleans City Council is scheduled to vote on Thursday on whether to sign off on the demolitions of three projects. HUD already has its bulldozers in place, engines warm and ready to roll the next morning. |
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Park Plan Is Chosen for Governors Island More than 10 years after the Coast Guard left Governors Island in New York Harbor, a team of architects has been selected to design a grandly whimsical green 40-acre park on its southern half that public officials hope will ultimately attract commercial development. |
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The World's Densest Cities Big national economic centers, or refuges from poor countrysides. And generally speaking, not very pleasant places to live. That pretty much tells the story of the world's densest cities, where people living on top of each other scramble for their share of local resources and, in most cases, put up with poor transportation systems and a lack of gentrification. |
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A Brutalist Bargain Why has the city's Historic Preservation Review Board unanimously declared the Third Church of Christ, Scientist to be an official D.C. landmark, preventing not only its demolition, but even its unauthorized alteration? Because, it turns out, it is a sterling example of the mid-century school of design known as Brutalism. |
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Cities Play the Green Card to Achieve Success From the use of horse-drawn carriages to solve public transport shortage in Bayamo, Cuba to an emissions trading scheme in Taiyuan, China, cities around the world are providing inspiring examples in the global quest for sustainability and the fight against climate change. |
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Britain's Lost Cities by Gavin Stamp What the Luftwaffe began, arrogant, philistine town planners finished off. |
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
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Beyond the clouds The views from Zaha Hadid's new railway are magnificent - but her trains and stations alone are worth the trip. Jonathan Glancey rides an unexpected marvel in the Alps. |
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A Single Block in Chelsea Is Becoming an Architectural Wonderland Until a few years ago, West 19th Street between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues was best known as the heart of West Chelsea’s parking-lot district, a windy, nondescript strip that ducked beneath the rusting High Line and terminated at the West Side Highway. A few art galleries and the Kitchen gave it a certain grunge glamour. Now, driven by the High Line at one end of the block, inspired by the presence of a Frank Gehry office building at the other, and invigorated by the financial premium attached to marquee architects, developers are transforming these few dozen feet of sidewalk into a living anthology of contemporary design. |
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Burials and Cemeteries Go Green Ginny Boll loves life. The 78-year-old former nun operates a dog-grooming business in Wisconsin in a small shed near her home on her woodland property. When she dies, Boll says she wants her friends to hold a party to celebrate her life and then to bury her simply. She's not interested in being embalmed or laid to rest in a fancy casket. Boll wants to return to the earth in a more natural way. |
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Architecture Biennale Sao Paulo 2007 The seventh Architecture Biennale — the most important after Venice say the Brazilians — takes place until December 16 in the exhibition building by Oscar Niemeyer in Sao Paolo. Alex van de Beld of architecture firm Onix, one of the participants in the Dutch presentation, visited the Biennale and explored the favelas. |
Monday, December 17, 2007
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A clear pattern of risk emerges from city smog L.A.'s notorious air pollution is hardest on kids. The closer to a freeway they live, play or attend school, the more likely it is that their developing lungs' capacity will be reduced. |
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Intelligent Sensors and Diodes Save Cycling Lives Copenhagen is about to start testing a new system of diode lights aimed at reducing the danger of bike-vechicle collisions at four particularly dangerous intersections. Blinking diodes [similar to the photo above on a Copenhagen bike lane] are placed in the asphalt on the final stretch towards the intersection and, when a cylists passes a sensor, the lights start to blink and warn motorists to the fact that a cycle is present. |
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Now you're walking Washington, D.C., for years bashed by politicians, its population shrinking and, at one point, almost bankrupt, has become a model of how the entire nation might smartly develop in the 21st century? |
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Beijing offers public bikes for green Olympics Green transportation is an important concept in the Beijing Olympic Games due next August. The city is now promoting public bicycles, hoping that the environmentally friendly mode of transport can play an important role during and after the games. |
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Let the ‘Starchitects’ Work All the Angles It’s hard to pinpoint when the “starchitect” became an object of ridicule. The term is a favorite of churlish commentators, who use it to mock architects whose increasingly flamboyant buildings, in their minds, are more about fashion and money than function. |
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Living, Dead 10,000 Filipino families live in this massive graveyard in Manila. I recently spent five days walking among its residents taking photos and hearing stories of struggle and survival. |
Saturday, December 15, 2007
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Starry Night, circa 2007 If you live anywhere near a big city it’s likely you can’t see much through the fog of light pollution. Now, a movement of activists and scientists are taking up the cause of darkness. |
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HTA bags UK's first eco-village HTA Architects has won a competition to design the UK's first net-zero-carbon 'eco-village' in Bristol. |
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A challenging site brings out the best Concord Pacific's four tower Spectrum took a chunk of derelict land and created a model for Vancouver's eco-dense future. |
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The Greening of Las Vegas Las Vegas is all about the “experience.” In a city focused on spontaneous and gluttonous consumption, the trick is to keep the tourists entertained and the green innovation transparent, or the city will undermine its sole reason for being. But, with environmental concerns now looming large, even Las Vegas is looking to replace the Luxor beam with compact fluorescents. |
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How Should We Be Thinking About Urbanization? A Freakonomics Quorum. Urbanization has been climbing steadily of late, with more than half of the world’s population now living in cities. Given the economic, sociological, political, and environmental ramifications, how should we be thinking about this? We gathered a quorum of smart thinkers on this subject — James Howard Kunstler, Edward Glaeser, Robert Bruegmann, Dolores Hayden, and Alan Berube. |
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Subways: The New Urban Status Symbol Many cities are constructing new mass transit systems to cope with overcrowding and high energy costs. But some are just hoping to gain some big-city glamour. |
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So Many Presidential Debates, So Little Concern Shown for Cities In mid-October, I noted that the Democrats and Republicans had held 17 or so presidential debates (the number can vary, depending on who’s counting), but that with all the gabbing they managed not to focus on America’s cities. |
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
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The Year in Architecture Green roofs sprouted in the South Bronx, the Glass House opened wide, bus shelters got chic, Frank Gehry finally built something in New York, Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs kissed and made up (after a fashion), and a gauzy aluminum museum rose shimmering over the Bowery. |
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Farmadelphia "Farmadelphia," is a widely known proposal for the transformation of Philadelphia, in which that city's vacant and abandoned lots are turned into a thriving agricultural zone – complete with crops grown for local consumption and soil remediation, and with an eye toward future tourism, including surreal petting zoos, hay rides, and even corn mazes. |
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Courtyard Living A Portland-based competition announces the winning proposals that promote high-density housing. |
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The end of cheap food Rising food prices are a threat to many; they also present the world with an enormous opportunity. |
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Lagos la Vida Loca By next year, more than half the world's population will for the first time in history be living in cities. Current's Mariana van Zeller tours Lagos, Nigeria, the world's fastest-growing "Megacity." |
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Left-Hand-Turn Elimination It seems that sitting in the left lane, engine idling, waiting for oncoming traffic to clear so you can make a left-hand turn, is minutely wasteful — of time and peace of mind, for sure, but also of gas and therefore money. Not a ton of gas and money if we’re talking about just you and your Windstar, say, but immensely wasteful if we’re talking about more than 95,000 big square brown trucks delivering packages every day. And this realization — that when you operate a gigantic fleet of vehicles, tiny improvements in the efficiency of each one will translate to huge savings overall — is what led U.P.S. to limit further the number of left-hand turns its drivers make. |
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A New Push for Affordability Officials from seven counties in southern New York State want to give a total of $87.5 million to local towns and villages as an incentive to build more housing affordable to young professionals — who by many calculations are leaving Long Island and other counties at high rates. |
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Reverse commuters reflect shift in land use
As firms flee crowded downtown to the suburbs, a new class of worker is fleeing the city every morning. |
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£100million shopping bonanza as Oxford St bans cars for one day Mayor Ken Livingstone, who opened the event, said: "It has become a major event in London's calendar in the run-up to Christmas [and] shows us all what the West End will be like in 2013 with traffic removed and the streets turned over to the pedestrian." |
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Cities in global competition for talent
Research organization warns ability of urban centres to attract 'best and brightest' may be in jeopardy. |
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Have basement, not moving Adult children who live too long with parents are less likely to buy own homes, study shows. |
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Beijing's Subway Master Plan: 516 Kilometers 561 kilometers is a little less than four times the size of the Berlin U-Bahn, twice the size of the Moscow Metro, and a bit larger than the London Underground. The Beijing government expects to invest a total 80 billion yuan ($10.8 billion U.S.) in expanding the current 142-kilometer network in the coming years. |
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Phantom Shanghai Vancouver photographer explores China's most transformed city. |
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Who's afraid of American Apparel? Not these art galleries Conventional wisdom holds that artists are urban pioneers. They move into derelict and sometimes dangerous neighbourhoods, where space is cheap and restrictions are few, and create real estate value as they create their art. But the newest art district in Manhattan has sprouted up in a neighbourhood that is already settled and safe and growing ever pricier, even if sometimes the smell of rotting seafood wafts through its rat-friendly streets. |
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
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Good Streets Include Streetcars Devotees of the Red Hook, Brooklyn Fairway grocery store can have the pleasure, after loading up on gourmet salt and other essentials, of sipping coffee on their back veranda over looking the river. It's a wonderful view. On your right is the Statue of Liberty, flame aloft, and to your left, about ten feet away, a decrepit old green streetcar |
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Calgary: The Events Leading Up To Sir Norman Foster In 1970, the year I moved to Calgary, the oil boom was just beginning to flower. Our house was in a new development at the northwestern edge of the city, and I walked past horses on my way to school, and past an isolated shack that stood on a few bare acres, waiting for a developer to raze it. The small house contained a large family of porridge-eating hillbillies, to use the phrase of a friend who was one of them. Their father was one of those handsome, hard-drinking, capable, wild-haired western archetypes who wore one pant leg inside his cowboy boot and the other outside. On good days, my friend and his father rode horses in the foothills adjoining the rented property, among the evergreens and stands of poplar that have long since become suburbs and malls. On bad days, of which there was no shortage, there was alcohol and violence. |
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Subways: The New Urban Status Symbol Many cities are constructing new mass transit systems to cope with overcrowding and high energy costs. But some are just hoping to gain some big-city glamour. |
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Suburban 'Brady' Homes and Urban Lofts Fill Voids With Large-Scale Exclusive Artwork for the Modern Mindset From mid-century modern homes in the 'burbs (think Brady Bunch) to urban city lofts, hip homeowners are challenged to find artwork to fit their atypical interiors and often large, open environments. |
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Cities redo streets for pedestrians, cyclists, transit “Complete Streets” movement presses a growing number of cities to plan for multimodal transportation. |
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Foster + Partners Reveal Masterplan for New Omani City
Foster + Partners revealed their masterplan for the a new compact city west of oman's capital |
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Women's car trips often more complex A new study says women make complex trips with multiple stops in the family car far more often than men. Statistics Canada has found that “trip chaining” – the practice of stopping at intermediate points during a journey – is a woman's domain. |
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Urban islands Modern residential projects are offering ample green spaces and robust facilities alongside homes to satisfy customers' cravings for urban living in an rural setting. But, despite much ballyhoo about modern garden cities, today's developments bear only a passing resemblance to the original idea. |
Saturday, December 8, 2007
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Redefining American Beauty, by the Yard When Cecilia Foti, a seventh grader at the Bancroft Middle School here, was asked to write a “persuasive” essay for her English class in the spring semester, she did not choose a topic deeply in tune with her peers — the pros and cons of school uniforms, say, or the district’s retro policy on chewing gum and cellphones. Instead, she addressed the neighborhood’s latest controversy: her family’s front yard. “The American lawn needs to be eradicated from our society and fast!” she wrote, explaining that her family had replaced its own with a fruit and vegetable garden. She argued for the importance of water conservation, the dangers of pesticides and the dietary benefits and visual appeal of an edible yard. “Was the Garden of Eden grass?” she reasoned. “No.” |
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Green Toronto: Green Garage Doing what you can to make the city a greener place doesn't just begin in the home, but on top of it. Just ask Colin Viebrock who started his company, Green Garage, by building a green roof on top of his own - you guessed it - garage. |
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China quintuples arable land use tax China is set to quintuple tax on the use of arable land for non-farming purposes and charge foreign invested companies as much as their domestic peers in a bid to protect farm land and better control land supply, according to an ordinance released by the State Council on Thursday. |
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Think you have it bad? Try a 240-km commute With West Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains and bucolic farmland still virtually in her rear-view mirror, Lori Forrester wheels onto Route 7, her target fixed, 120 kilometres southeast. A quick left. And then she stops. Pastures of green have given way to taillights of red. "Here, this isn't going to last long,'' she says, but the wailing sirens and the smoke pouring from a burning truck suggest otherwise. Just 111 more kilometres to go. |
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Commuter kicks car habit Two years ago, Simon Pastucha - an urban designer and planner for the city of Los Angeles - left his Mercedes SUV at the dealership and hasn't looked back. |
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Lost in translation in the City of Babel The Toronto area is proudly multilingual. But more than 145 languages can pose problems in our hospitals and courts, which too often rely on unqualified interpreters. |
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Will Self Psychogeography is the newest work from English writer Will Self. It’s basically about walking, but not about pleasant strolls through the woods. His walks take him to overlooked and hazardous places – airports are a favorite destination. He has walked from O’Hare all the way into downtown Chicago, some 18 miles. Studio 360’s Pejk Malinovski met him at LaGuardia Airport for a walk toward Manhattan. |
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The Pigeon Police Pity the New York City pigeon. He finds a place where natural predators are few, and where bread crumbs—note that stooped woman clutching a plastic bag—are bountiful, and yet his life expectancy is just three to four years, compared with fifteen for his cousins in captivity. So life is short: he stuffs himself before he mistakes an office window for open sky. Or maybe he has the misfortune of needing to relieve himself—perhaps more than once—near a subway stop in the district of the Honorable Simcha Felder, councilman from Brooklyn. Felder steps in the guano—he calls it a “puddle” of excrement—and becomes enraged, commissioning a report from his staff: “Curbing the Pigeon Conundrum.” Soon after, Christine Quinn, the City Council Speaker, refers to pigeons as “flying rats.” Now there’s talk of implementing the report’s Recommendation No. 5: “Create Pigeon Czar.” The czar’s responsibilities would include reducing the food supply, promoting birth control (via oral contraceptives disguised as crumbs), and supervising a pilot program called “dovecoting,” which involves confiscating pigeon eggs and replacing them with decoys. |
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Nickels to employees: Take bus Seattle Mayor, Greg Nickels, has proposed giving all city employees free bus passes by 2009 to encourage use of transit as a means for reducing the air pollution that causes global warming. |
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Design Like You Give a Damn:
In his introduction to Design Like You Give a Damn, Cameron Sinclair, founder of Architecture for Humanity, comments that one of the organization’s first competitions to design transitional shelters brought out entries that “ranged from the pragmatic to the provocative.” This book, which showcases many of these entries alongside other examples of “architectural responses to humanitarian crises,” never manages to jump over the shadow of this false dichotomy, and self-burdened with this choice, the book contains ninety-two different designs, more than thirty of which decidedly veer away from the pragmatic. In doing so, Design Like You Give a Damn inadvertently highlights the questions of what an architect’s role in a humanitarian crisis should actually be, what “design” might mean in such a context, and fundamentally, what working “like you give a damn” might actually entail. |
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Jane Jacobs and the Crucible of Prosperity Over the deceased activist’s objections, the new Brooklyn waterfront will have to survive its success. |
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Beyond the picket fence Chicago's northern suburbs are among America's most idyllic. None is grander than Lake Forest, where the average home costs over $1m. But the suburb, by definition unaffordable, is building something unusual: affordable housing. A new development in Lake Forest will include a few cheaper homes, as required by a new town ordinance. |
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Lessons of Boston’s Big Dig America’s most ambitious infrastructure project inspired engineering marvels—and colossal mismanagement. |
Friday, December 7, 2007
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Forcing Americans into smaller cars Ask a European to describe a typical American car in one word and the answer will invariably be “big”. An energy bill set to pass through the House of Representatives this week is likely to number the days of the vast automobiles that are such a potent symbol of American power. On Friday November 30th a deal was brokered by John Dingell, a pro-car Democrat, and Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the house, to make cars travel on average no fewer than 35 miles per (American) gallon by 2020. As a measure of the task ahead, no car in Ford’s range is yet so thirstless. |
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China’s Valley of Tears The explosion of capitalism in China has many Westerners asking when political democracy—as the “natural” accompaniment of capitalism—will emerge. But a closer look quickly dispels any such hope. |
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Floating House Design is Pitt's Best The most audacious of the 13 "Make it Right" house designs, unveiled on Monday, may also be the most sensible. |
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Urban Revitalization - Creating a catalyst for downtown redevelopment In the early 1990s, Spokane, Wash.'s downtown core was on its way to becoming a vacant, blighted area. Prostitutes and drug dealers had taken up residence on the downtown streets that used to bustle with businesspeople, shoppers and tourists. Only a coordinated effort by city leaders and downtown owners and businesses saved the city, which is built on the banks of the Spokane River about 300 miles east of Seattle. |
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Save the world, ignore global warming Global warming has become the obsession of our time. From governments and campaigners meeting for the climate summit in Buenos Aires right now we hear the incessant admonition: making global warming our first priority is the moral test of our age. Yet they are wrong. Global warming is real and caused by CO2. The trouble is that the climate models show we can do very little about the warming. Even if everyone (including the United States) did Kyoto and stuck to it throughout the century, the change would be almost immeasurable, postponing warming by just six years in 2100. |
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In Japan, rural economies wane as cities thrive Japan's $4.7 trillion economy has expanded for the last five and a half years. Urban centers like Tokyo and Nagoya, the seat of the Japanese car industry, are thriving, as seen in the building boom decorating Tokyo's skyline with glittering new high-rises. But in regions like Akita, the mountainous northern prefecture that is home to Noshiro, downtowns have emptied and factories have closed, and an exodus to Tokyo of youths seeking jobs has left behind towns that are predominantly for the elderly. |
Thursday, December 6, 2007
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Ciclovía: A Moving Experience in Bogotá, Colombia Ciclovía is a weekly event in which over 70 miles of city streets are closed to traffic and opened to walking, biking, running, skating, recreating, picnicking, and talking with family, neighbors and strangers. |
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Welcome to Los Angeles With one of the country’s most notorious slums sitting within spitting distance of new million-dollar lofts and five-star hotels, Los Angeles is using tough new policing to clean up its worst eyesore. For the children of Skid Row, though, it’s business as usual—finding shelter, trying to stay out of trouble, and most of all, getting out. |
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Twenty things you should know about BIG Historically the field of architecture has been dominated by 2 opposing extremes. On one side an avant-garde full of crazy ideas. Originating from philosophy, mysticism or a fascination of the formal potential of computer visualizations they are often so detached from reality that they fail to become something other than eccentric curiosities. On the other side there are well organized corporate consultants that build predictable and boring boxes of high standard. Architecture seems to be entrenched in two equally unfertile fronts: Either naively utopian or petrifying pragmatic. |
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Footloose and Fancy Free A field survey of walkable urban places in the top 30 U.S. metropolitan areas. |
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
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The Pink Project While filming on a set in New Orleans, actor Brad Pitt became seduced by the powerful image of a pink-clad CGI house within the lush Louisiana surroundings. He saw the pink structure as a metaphor, representing the future of renewed housing for those displaced by the recent disasters. |
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Paris Approves Revamped Les Halles Les Halles, known as the “stomach of Paris” during its days as the French capital’s wholesale food market and more recently an un-loved 1970s transit hub and 1980s shopping mall, is poised for a makeover. Last month the Conseil de Paris approved plans for a glowing shell-like structure, designed by architects Patrick Berger and Jacques Anziutti, that will contain cultural facilities. |
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Vive la revolution! These are the first images of a controversial plan to construct a number of skyscrapers across Paris, which was unveiled by the mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, last week. |
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West World The least significant elements of the five new bids to develop Hudson Yards are the competing renderings on view at the MTA’s storefront on East 43rd Street. They are nearly fiction, because nobody believes any single builder will get the job. |
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Ciclovía: A Moving Experience in Bogotá, Colombia Recently, I had the opportunity to travel with comrades Karla Quintero of Transportation Alternatives and Streetsblog editor Aaron Naparstek to Bogotá, Colombia to document some of the amazing advances going on in the livable streets movement there. We spent an entire Sunday, from 5am 'til nearly 5pm, riding bicycles around during Ciclovía, a weekly event in which over 70 miles of city streets are closed to traffic and opened to walking, biking, running, skating, recreating, picnicking, and talking with family, neighbors and strangers. Ciclovía was simply one of the most moving experiences I have had in my entire life (no pun intended). |
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Artist puts city sights in lights The art of illumination has been taken to a new level of sophistication in the North-East this winter. Complementing the jolly seasonal brashness of the Christmas lights are more subtle works by artists who rose to the challenge of using light as their medium. |
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The Streetcar Surge Streetcars, popular again in a growing number of cities, have the potential to be a vital part of urban transportation systems. |
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Using bicycles to reach out to the community A West Oakland arts community has found a way to attract young people to some non- traditional creative pursuits. |
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A walk in progress A tour of the (more or less) finished sections of the new Greenway reveals that intentions have been met - and missed. |
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Walkable cities are newly desirable Caitlin Jones and her fiancé, Evan Oxfeld, grew up in suburbs where getting anywhere worth going required a car. When they started looking for a home together, they wanted something different: walkability. |
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Amtrak Agonistes Here's a cosmic question: How much is 30 minutes of a business traveler's time worth? Here's a concrete (well, concrete and steel) answer: about $13.5 billion. |
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The Embers of Gentrification For the better part of two decades, the powerful force of affluence has swept across the city like wildfire, transforming neighborhoods in ways that have come to seem inevitable. But what happens when the fire goes out? |
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Senior transportation a growing concern Going home for the holidays may bring cheer and joy to many but a harsh reality for others: Their parents are too old to drive. |
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Newcomers put strain on cities Canada's three largest cities are struggling to cope with a flood of newcomers primarily from China, India, the Philippines and Pakistan as immigration approaches levels not seen since the end of the "Great Migration." |
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A city of unmatched diversity Half the people in the City of Toronto are now foreign-born, according to 2006 Canadian census figures released yesterday, making it more diverse than Miami, Los Angeles or New York City. |
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
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Last call Why the gay bars of Boston are disappearing, and what it says about the future of city life. |
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Death of Main Street, One Local Zoning Law at a Time Those who push for federal regulations to rein in "big business" often don't realize that the biggest of big businesses don't mind heavy federal regulation at all. They have the resources to comply with them, not to mention the clout in Washington to get the regulations written in a way that most hurts upstarts and competitors. Big businesses know that a heavy regulatory burden is the best way to make sure small- and medium-sized businesses never rise up to challenge them. |
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Good to Go The folks behind PhillyCarShare want a million Philadelphians to give up their automobiles in the name of saving the environment. The really crazy part? They just might pull it off. |
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Cities, Suburbs Deal With Increase In Super-Sized 'McMansions' About two-thirds of America's largest cities have reported the appearance of “McMansions” – new, much larger houses built on lots that once contained more modest homes, a new study has revealed. |
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Building Plans Give U2 Hometown Blues Abroad, the biggest rock band on the planet are lauded as the champions of the poor and the conscience of rich nations normally indifferent to global poverty. But at home in their native Dublin, U2 have become embroiled in a row with Irish environmentalists over two building projects, with Bono and co accused of arrogance. |
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Gritty Cities to National Models In his opening remarks at a recent conference, Robert Antonicello, executive director of the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency, quoted from founding father Alexander Hamilton, who predicted that "a great city will rise on the west bank of the Hudson." |
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'Ambitious' Beijing scheme to track bicycles China is to launch a vastly ambitious scheme to register all of the country's bicycles amid an epidemic of thefts. |
Monday, December 3, 2007
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Brad Pitt Commissions Designs for New Orleans Thom Mayne of Morphosis in Los Angeles designed a house that would float if the city floods. James Timberlake of KieranTimberlake Associates in Philadelphia created a house with native vines climbing up the side walls to provide shade and coolness. Steven B. Bingler of Concordia in New Orleans envisioned a house with wide front steps ideal for a traditional crawfish boil. |
Saturday, December 1, 2007
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Horses pitched as alternative transport for France French towns worried about fuel prices, pollution and striking transport workers need look no further than the horse. Horses are a possible alternative for vehicles such as school buses and refuse trucks, say groups eager to pick up on global concerns about eco-friendly transport. |
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